Traqueros: Mexican Railroad Workers in the United States, 1870–1930 by Jeffrey Marcos Garcílazo, foreword by Vicki L. Ruiz (review)

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In Traqueros, Garcilazo explores the transformation of track work in the American Southwest with attention to the preeminent role of Mexican railroad workers in the industry after the completion of the transcontinental railroad. In this examination, track work is transformed from a diverse multiethnic part of the labor market that employed large numbers of Irish, Greek, Italian, and Chinese immigrant workers as well as African Americans into one that in the southwestern United States came to be dominated by Mexican workers. These workers traveled first as solo laborers then as families in a shift the railroads encouraged due to the belief by railroad companies that Mexican workers would live in homes that many others would not. The railroads understood that bringing a family along would more firmly tie the male workers to the boxcar homes and to the job. Solo workers could leave the railroads with little worry, but a husband would think twice before doing so if his wife and children were dependent on the company for housing and he did not have land of his own. These railroad camps became mobile as workers traveled across the rail lines, yet they were communities nonetheless.

In several well organized chapters, Garcilazo nicely shows how the railroad industries in Mexico and the United States developed in tandem and how the transit infrastructure they developed helped move people from the interior of Mexico to the labor camps of the Southwest. In this process the railroads developed well-articulated systems of labor recruitment and constantly sought to reduce attrition. Many workers entered the United States for railroad work, yet soon abandoned railroad work for industrial work. Seen by many experienced Mexican workers as an industry for “greenhorns,” track work was often the place where Mexican immigrant workers began their foray into paid labor in the United States. Unlike many Mexican Americans, who often went from field labor to industrial labor, the Mexican-born migrants were often directly linked to the boxcar communities from El Paso to Los Angeles and Chicago.

The boxcar communities, which often formed the genesis for Mexican community development in many cities across the United States, are examined in detail. Garcilazo argues that the moving camps dovetailed with the tradition of semi-mobile rancherías which emerged in northern Mexico and became the foundation for migratory labor circuits among Mexican workers. This culture of semi-permanent movement meant that Mexican workers were accustomed to labor and migration as communities of extended families or tribal groups. The railroads fought against permanent settlement for Mexican-descent peoples, as is amply detailed by the destruction of Hispano land rights in Colorado, even where other employers saw a benefit to protecting those property rights. Railroads, on the other hand, sought workers unencumbered by notions of land ownership and so did not favor Mexican Americans protected by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Despite the coercion involved in selecting workers and keeping them on the job, Mexican workers maintained and built new communities as workers...